Several luxury hotels in Beijing have said they will stop using the tools, which once provided unfiltered Internet as a convenience to their customers.

On Thursday, a cloud service provider in Beijing notified users that it would practise shutting down and reporting VPN providers on the orders of Beijing's Public Security Bureau.

Tech giants Apple and Amazon, too, have moved to limit their customers' access to the tools in China in what has been seen as a voluntary move to get ahead of the impending crackdown.

Yesterday, Apple said it was removing a number of the programs from its app store, while Amazon's Chinese partner said that customers would no longer be allowed to use "illegal" VPNs on its cloud service.

"There have been many rounds of government murmurings about VPN crackdowns, and foreign and Chinese businesses had grown used to only minor or temporary restrictions," said Mr Graham Webster, a senior researcher scholar at Yale Law School. "But this time appears different." - AFP